The ASP Aftermath: Considerations and Calculations in the Outsourced Relationship

By Dawn Marie Yankeelov

Once you’ve signed with an Application Service Provider you may be so relieved, it’s off to another IT issue. However, during the early months you will begin to measure whether your needs are met or unmet in practice. And, then there are remedies or upgrades that may be required of the ASP or yet another ancillary, but support vendor, such as training for your internal IT staff.

Timing of Performance Benchmarks

“The true measure of your ASP relationship is service and delivery,” said Jim Clishem, CEO of Xodiax, a Louisville-based data center that works with ASPs as clients. Clishem suggests it will be a four-to-six month cycle of evaluation before you can be sure of the primary performance metrics: redundancy, availability, and reliability.

Dave Nass, Global Partner of Solutions Operations for Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting) in Chicago, agreed that a certain amount of time should be allowed to an ASP for stabilizing operations and putting appropriate customer support into action. He suggests that, as a rule of thumb, basic messaging and email services should be stable in a month. More sophisticated applications, such as time and expense reporting, should be stable in four to six months. In highly complex ASP installations involving Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software from SAP or similar vendors across multiple countries should be given up to a year to shakeout all concerns.

Nass pointed out that while outsourcing as a concept has been around for many years in the IT community, the traditional Accenture Fortune 1000 clients are accustomed to up to five year contracts. Often there are issues of great importance, such as pension liability and large expenditures that had to be weighed in. “Many ASP models allow for far less expenditures than in the past. ASPs are often far less sensitive to contract duration, and offer a cleaner transaction than other outsourcing options,” he added. The typical ASP contract is two years; some are now offered at three years with renewable terms.

He said his consulting often involves defining the role of an ASP, or, in some cases, multiple partners for his clients. ASP as a term can refer to hosted applications, web-based outsourcing, business service providers (BSPs) who offer consulting, and alliances with third party hosters, data centers, and other telcom companies.

Going Up or Down in Seats

The test of time rules for an ASP often come down to the terms negotiated for growth or shrinkage. ASPs are typically selling seats in a subscription model on a per seat/per month charge. Terms are generally spelled out as to the caps or collars on growth or downsizing. If not, Accenture and Xodiax counsel clients to ask questions even after a contract closes. These terms can be renegotiated, if circumstances change in big ways. Notably for growth terms—seat subscription terms can be negotiated to be more favorable to your favor.

Multiplying Complexity with Multiple Vendors

If one ASP relationship has been useful, it doesn’t always stand to reason that two or three are better. “This is going to require a serious look at the affective user communities. If the communities don’t overlap, then there will be minimal complexity in multiple relationships,” explained Nass. It is when a customer attempts to launch several ASP relationships at once that the complexity becomes overwhelming to an internal IT department. “When you start getting overlapping initiatives in the same user community, two or three is all that can be truly handled under the best of circumstances,” Nass said. He said vertical ASPs could compliment the use of a messaging email ASP, given the right scenarios.

Accenture encourages customers readied for multiple ASP plays to look at ASP aggregators, like Jamcracker. Jamcracker, in part funded by Accenture, assists in finding the right players and offers one SLA, one set of passwords for logins to multiple ASPs and other simplifications for clients.

Clishem at Xodiax suggests a three phased approach to decision-making from doing homework to extended interview to trial period before settling on several ASP choices. “Pragmatically it is just so much easier to manage fewer relationships,” he said.

Asking for Help

Once in an ASP relationship success or failure may be keyed to whether you ask for the necessary support—both on a customer service level relating to the ASP’s help desk services, and in adjunct training.

There should be three tiers of customer support offered by the chosen ASP vendor: (!) first call where 50% of all concerns are solved; (2) user help which means advanced technical support; and (3) guru level or access to system engineers, when necessary. Nass at Accenture said he believes most ASPs do well at tier 2 support, but many expect the customer to handle tier 1 calls internally. “If customers as a rule believe they will get good tier 1 support, they will get disappointed,” Nass said.

The metrics to use for evaluation of an ASP is how many calls get resolved within the agreed upon timeframe.
Training may be required on some applications within a user community, even though most ASPs attempt to bypass this service offering with low-end, no training needed solutions. “In most cases, an end user doesn’t just sit down and figure it out. It is never too late to ask about training the trainers inside your company,” said Nass. Vertical ASPs may be able to recommend training partners, but it is not advisable to rely on an ASP for all your internal training needs.

Legal Counsel and Remedies

First and foremost before finalizing a contract with an ASP, several individuals within your organization should be consulted outside the CIO. Since ASP contracts include Service Level Agreements which are nontrivial to mission-critical data, a company attorney or outside legal counsel should be consulted. In addition, the business sponsor of the service or affected department needs to sign off. “Often this signoff is more important than the CIO in actual implementation issues. The CIO must be included because of standards, compliance, and interoperability,” Nass said.

Even after launch, coupled with internal inter-departmental support, the SLA and the ASP contract terms should be reviewed by the company attorney. Customers of ASPs can always go back to the negotiating table on the SLA, confirmed Clishem and Nass.

The Service Level Agreement often becomes one of the most sensitive documents to be signed or renegotiated, based your need for uptime. An average SLA will promise up 3 “9”s or uptime 99.9% of the time with some penalty time. No matter what an ASP presents, it is up to you to ask for a custom SLA that you can live with. “You must look at it as you would a disaster recovery plan. Understand the critical-ity. We encourage clients to push back and ask for what they really want. Some managed service providers like Loudcloud offer a 100% guarantee,” said Nass. The most critical question is not how many “9”s are offered. It is: what’s the remedy? Some price points for downtime do not adequately compensate a corporation for its downtime.

There is no list of industries that should play more attention to an SLA than another. “Any customer with mission critical data is one that needs an adequate SLA,” said Clishem.

He uses the following questions as a data center to determine the appropriate service level:

1. Will your customer’s monies not come in due to the downtime? This would be especially true in an ecommerce environment.

2. Will you lose an opportunity to save costs? This would be true in a transportation company, such as an airline that uses an online reservation system with other applications.

3. Will you lose good will if your application doesn’t run either within your company or with your customers? This might be true especially in organizations or trade associations.

At this time there is no “Better Business Bureau” concept in place policing ASPs. Some ASPs voluntarily participate in certification programs. For example, IBM puts its data centers involved in hosting through an ISO 9000 team assessment.

Clients with more than $60 million in revenues using an ASP should spend the time getting acquainted early on with their ASP. “See where respective companies are going early on and see if this fits with your corporate vision of where you are going. An ASP relationship should be a robust and thick relationship,” Nass said.

A Twelve Step Program to Painless ASP Implementation

By Dawn Marie Yankeelov

Scores of web articles tout how easy and automatic going live with an Application Service Provider service can be. Enter reality check. Rum Chopra, a CIO that’s actively rolling out an ASP-based infrastructure for 14 disparate facilities knows otherwise. “You’re not going to be able to hand over the keys to the kingdom, and any CIO that starts out that way is going to be disappointed,” he explained in a recent interview.

He cited a systematic and orderly list of processes that can be applied to any ASP implementation. In this article we will look at how he moved through 12 steps of decision-making, going live and what he learned. “This is an IT implementation and should be treated with the same degree of care. You’ve got to do all the homework. It’s your responsibility to be a good customer,” he said.

Chopra has recently completed the final hurdles of an ASP implementation for his Chicago-based health services company, The C/N Group. AS CIO, he personally went through a comparative evaluation process to determine that ANDALON Health Systems would be the best-of-breed technology partner for The C/N Group. ANDALON is based in Amerherst, N.Y.

From discussions with Chopra and other ASP users, I have gleaned the following no-nonsense 12-step program for all CIOs:

1. Look at a minimum of three firms for the infrastructure, and software you would like to have deployed. Compare and contrast solutions.

2. Listen to the internal politics of your IT staffs, particularly if there are multiple facilities involved.

3. Select an internal test group to act as the company innovators, led by team members that can be the champions of change.

4. Before the implementation, make sure the ASP knows and understands your business practices, as it relates to deployment.

5. Realize that, in most cases, you are doing a whole rebuild of your IT infrastructure internally. Be aware of what software and hardware people are actually using, before you move to standardize.

6. Consider what security measures and levels of access will be appropriate and whether they can be provided by your ASP.

7. Know what you are paying for. Review pricing and consulting fees beforehand. Read all contracts.

8. Review your bandwidth requirements for a successful ASP implementation.

9. Let the ASP show you what planning it has done on your behalf, before your beta installs.

10. Work with the ASP for timely data conversions, where necessary. Some ASPs include this as part of their service. Some don’t.

11. Allow time and money for adequate internal training on the systems and software delivered by an ASP.

12. Know what your SLA means. Your Service Level Agreement may need to be adjusted in practice to meet your uptime needs.

Chopra said during his first assessment steps, he really narrowed down what the ASP model could offer, and which vertical ASP had the experience to understand his unique issues.

Back in September 1999 he had only a staff of 4.5 people dedicated exclusively to IT functions. “There was a great deal of decentralization and we were dealing with multiple locations,” he cited. The company has annual revenues of $20 million with approximately 92 employees. “We were a multi-headed monster. At the time, I realized it was going to be a real challenge to centralize functions and to have it work through a central point. For billing and collections, it had become tough to manage and costly. We needed to take our business to the next level,” he said.

Chopra had previously worked at Equifax where he was first exposed to an ASP concept. “I knew that a centrally-hosted model could work and I actually started by investigating recommendations from some of our top physicians.”
His selection was ANDALON Health Systems, a full-service, vertical ASP that focuses exclusively on the healthcare industry. The company hosts a number of industry software products including Image Medical’s Practice Builder for image management, and Medical Manager, a high-end physician practice management system.

“Andalon is an aggregator of ASP services. There are many ASP firms offering base connectivity and desktop tools. We looked at all of them, including Data Return, and UsiNetworking, but they just didn’t understand our business,” Chopra said.

He said that he knew from the beginning there as going to be more resistance against change at some facilities in his network versus others. “Physicians are a very strange breed of people. Going from film to a filmless approach in imaging can be traumatic. That made training critical,” he pointed out.

After internal interviews with several target facilities, he was able to determine five facilities that were open to new procedures. “We started with an Exchange 2000 implementation and we were impressed with the level of support from Andalon. Their team included the hiring of top notch people—healthcare IT professionals in their 40s and 50s—grizzled veterans with management experience,” Chopra said. He added that an internal review and site surveys by ANDALON revealed that certain personal software choices by physicians would have to be considered in the planning.

ANDALON did a complete site survey for each of the facilities which looked at hardware, how much RAM was needed, what was hooked up, and what software was running regularly. Chopra indicated that security discussions were handled early and intelligently by ANDALON. “Since they were a former IT shop before becoming an ASP, they had experience in all aspects of deploying a WAN, etc.”

While he did not experience had problems with connectivity, he indicated that many ASPs’ weakest link is their control over connectivity options which can cause delays of up to three months. “There are better and worse providers for connectivity. Find out who your ASP uses to provide this,” he suggested.

Lastly, pricing and Service Level Agreements have to be negotiated with care. There was some bargaining and a ‘not to exceed’ figure, he said. Training was part of his final agreement. “ANDALON had us contract separately for this service,” he added.

March 2003
ASPectx To Sponsor TeN Awards Dinner in Louisville and Present Woman in Technology Award
ASPectx will be a key sponsor of the annual Top TeN Awards to be held on Wednesday, June 4, 2003 at the Kentucky International Convention Center beginning at 5:30 p.m.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

ASPectx To Sponsor TeN Awards Dinner in Louisville and Present Woman in Technology Award

(March. 1, 2003)—ASPectx will be a key sponsor of the annual Top TeN Awards to be held on Wednesday, June 4, 2003 at the Kentucky International Convention Center beginning at 5:30 p.m. TeN, which stands for the Technology Network of the Greater Louisville Region, presents awards in 10 categories, including Woman in Technology.
More than 400 professionals working in technology fields attend each year. The awards dinner is held in conjunction with the Next Tech (formerly ITEC), a trade show and seminar event. “This is one of the premier technology events for Louisville, and ASPectx is proud to lend its financial support to make the evening a success,” said Dawn Marie Yankeelov, president of ASPectx.

Ms. Yankeelov of ASPectx also serves as president of the local Louisville Women in Technology trade association, and she will present the Woman in Technology Award on the association’s behalf at the Top TeN Awards. ASPectx provides marketing, business planning, public relations and web consulting to technology firms and Fortune 1000 clientele. Last year, Ms. Yankeelov was a finalist for the Woman in Technology Award given by TeN for her contributions in building a network for women in technology and providing service to area tech startups. For more information on the Top TeN Awards, go to www.tenglr.com.

About ASPectx
ASPectx specializes in (a) marketing, business planning, and public relations services for technology-oriented companies, as well as (b) web consulting and technology assessment for Fortune 1000 clients. ASPectx is a repositioning of DMI founded in 1997 to reflect additional adjunct services related to competitive intelligence regarding emerging technologies including applications service providers, and the wireless sector. The firm serves clients in England and throughout the United States.

For More Information:

A Look at Government Markets for Handheld Applications

By Dawn Marie Yankeelov, President of ASPectx

Industry Overview
Government applications on handheld devices within the United States continue to increase in numbers and diversity because of an emphasis in government on improved productivity, accuracy of data, and the interest in mobile computing overall. Applications run the gamut from wireless email, to sifting through extensive crime databases on the web, to two-way messaging in proprietary systems on RF waves, to the filling out all manner of forms sent to instant printing on handheld printers. Beginning in the mid 90’s, a number of companies already serving the federal government within the IT space began to develop application modules or migrate existing applications to handheld devices.  There has been an increasing emphasis on the Palm OS applications, but there are also a fair number of proprietary protocols and private infrastructure methodologies being used.  Sweeping statements about who has the largest market share related to handheld devices and related applications available in federal, state and local government agencies are difficult to make since even the largest players, including Palm itself, IBM, Aethersystems, Cisco, and large consultants like Impact Innovations Government Group, for example, have captured less than 20 percent each of the overall perceived marketplace.  This foreshadows the difficulty in penetrating the market with applications designed for handhelds.  3.7 million government users of wireless services and handhelds are expected by late 2003, according to Aether Systems.  Generally speaking, those starting with federal government applications on handhelds have found resale value in looking to state and, in some cases, local government.  Clearly there are more low-end, forms-based applications coming, and the government markets are fragmented enough to warrant new players across all pricepoints between $15 applications per user to $800 applications per user, based on the research compiled for this report.  While we may never reach a paperless society in U.S. government, there is a desire to reduce paperwork in general.  Unfortunately many consulting arms of hardware providers, as well as software development/consulting firms already serving government entities are best equipped to offer wireless applications with multi-form features on handhelds, because they know the landscape.

Handheld Use in Government
IBM’s business development office has been quoted as saying that its government customers are looking for flexible solutions, so they can change components without having to change the rest of the system.  For example, field workers can start with PalmPilots and change to notebooks or another kind of handheld device down the line.  The ultimate goal is to tap into the benefits of wireless data solutions.  Improved productivity was cited by IBM for field workers on PalmPilots at an increase of 300 percent because of the increased accuracy of data as it moves between the field and headquarters.  For law enforcement applications, safety is considered a prime benefit of wireless because it allows officers in the field to identify drivers and their criminal records by tapping into national crime databases.

Public safety officials express the highest interest in handheld government-related applications because of the premium based on letting technology reduce the safety-risk factor.  Within public safety, solutions on handhelds are seen most in fire and emergency medical services. For example, American Medical Response (amr-inc.com), a private firm, hired by cities and counties in 38 states to provide emergency medical services, launched a mobile data-collection application using PalmPilots in early 1999.  It was first used in San Mateo County, Calif., to capture information ranging from details about their dispatch to the patient’s vital signs. The technology is also used to tap into patient databases to find out about allergies and medications where possible, as well as for dispatch of ambulances. The data was required under a new state law.  Information Architects (www.ia.com) began working in 1999 to create a wireless application on handhelds for police officers to access motor vehicle, registration, ticketing, and court information in Louisville, Ohio.  The citation information will soon be transmitted in real time to court for scheduling.

Palm has dozens of projects in the federal sector, including the Navy, the Centers for Disease Control, and the U.S. Postal Service.  (Contact:  John Inkley, Manager of Federal Sales for Palm, Inc.)  One application involves the use of handhelds on the aircraft carrier USS Constellation to grade the landing of every plane on the ship.  In the old days, the Naval landing signal officers would call out phases of approach to someone who would record it with a pen, paper and flashlight.  The information is now transmitted from the Palm to the central Naval database via modem or by plugging the Palm into a docking cradle connected to a port on an onboard computer, or wirelessly.

Beyond public safety, most handheld applications of interest fall into the areas of inspections, public utilities, probation, lotteries and deploying legacy-type applications.  Utilities are also growing users of wireless data networks. Since the 1970s, beta trials has been prevalent in using handhelds to monitor gas and oil pipelines and to control electric dispatch and transmission systems and read meters.  Still less than 1 percent of the 200 million meters in the United States are automated as of early 2000, according to the Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm.

The push for using handhelds and wireless solutions is coming on the crest of widely-anticipated third-generation wireless standards like CDMA (code division multiple access) which uses spread-spectrum technology to spread a signal over a greater bandwidth.  For example, instead of transmitting at 9.6Kbps or 14.4Kbps, users will be able to send and receive data at rates that can reach 1MBps or more by 2003.  CDMA, for example, is much more prevalent in Asia, foreshadowing international opportunities in that region.  Europe has spent its efforts on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), another wireless standard.  TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access), another hybrid, uses a different form of digital technology and is not that widely accepted in the US, which is what matters most in serving local and state governments.

New Opportunities:  New Grants under Federal Fire Act and COPS MORE 2001 Grants

There are additional sources of funding available for fire services to acquire new technologies such as wireless mobile data. The long-awaited appropriation of the FIRE Act’s new federal grant program for the nation’s fire departments was passed by Congress, opening a new window of federal support for local fire and emergency services agencies. Congress approved the appropriation of $100 million to fund the program in FY 2001, the full amount authorized by a bill that Congress passed in the Defense Authorization Act last October, according to Jerry Ross, legislative director of the Congressional Fire Services Institute. This means that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), designated to administer the programs, can begin to move forward with the program immediatelyFor the fourth year running, the Department of Justice COPS Office has announced a COPS MORE police technology grant competition. This year, up to $81 million in grant funding will be made available to local police and sheriff’s departments. As with previous years, COPS MORE 2001 is intended to support an increase in the amount of time that an agency’s officers are deployed in a community policing capacity due to technological enhancements, and subsequent gains in efficiency.

The grants will fund the following items:
· Mobile computing systems
· Personal computer systems
· Computer aided dispatch systems
· Record management systems
· Crime analysis hardware/software
· Automated booking systems
· Automated fingerprint identification systems
· Video arraignment systems

This year the COPS office is putting a cap on the total dollar amount any one applicant can receive. The limitations are as follows:
· Agencies with a service population of 50,000 or less may apply for a maximum of $250,000 in Federal funds;
· Agencies with a service population of 50,001 to 150,000 may apply for a maximum of $500,000 in Federal funds; and
· Agencies with a service population greater than 150,000 may apply for a maximum of $1 million in Federal funds.
The COPS Office also made other changes from previous years including the provision that grant awards will fund only one comprehensive, stand-alone, technology system.

General Market Size Statistics for Government

International Data Corp. of Framingham, Mass., predicts that by 2003, more people will be accessing the Web from wireless and handheld devices than from conventional hard-wired PCs.  IDC numbers suggest 729 million mobile Internet subscribers compared to 525 million wired users.

What does this mean for government?  “We see a steady migration from the desktop out to handheld in the federal sector,” said Dan Shell, consulting system engineer for Cisco Systems, Inc. who focuses on wireless and mobile IP for the federal sector, in an interview for Washington Technology magazine in November 2000.  Shell sees that opportunities will jump 10 times its current size in the next two years.  Cisco is particularly active in the handheld space as it relates to the Defense Department and NASA, partnering with Lockheed Martin Corp., Verizon Wireless, and Science Applications International Corp, for example.
Motorola has placed its bets on its wireless in-vehicle Mobile Workstation 520 and Motorola Private Data Total Access Communications, called DataTAC—mobile communications systems from federal, state and local enforcement agencies. This is well-financed effort with opportunities for partnering.  The Los Angeles Police Department spent $21.7 million in a Motorola mobile data system.  More than 1,200 of the Mobile Workstation 520 units have been installed in department vehicles to provide field access to major crime databases in the nation.

State and local governments will spend $38.8 billion on IT in 2001, a 5.4 percent increase over spending in 2000.  Federal spending on IT is expected to grow by 4.5 percent to $41.9 billion.  There are certain states that will naturally spend more.  About half the states have budget problems because of slowing revenue and increasing Medicaid spending, said Aldona Valicenti, chief information officer for Kentucky and president of the National Association if State Information Resource Executives.  Delaware, and North Carolina are experiencing serious cutbacks in 2001, for example.

Input Inc.’s Government Research Group (inputgov.com) expects double-digit growth in government IT spending on mobile and wireless, and they do not predict many other sectors will be like this.  The Navy has taken the lead in handheld use since traditionally each of 5,000 crew members would be handed a piece of paper a day for six months to do appropriate filing of reports.  Even the Democratic Technology and Communications Committee has looked at mobile systems, but has not yet made a decision about adopting them.

The primary downside to using handhelds and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) as the standard is the security question.  Some security experts believe that there is still a potential WAP security hole at the gateway server at this time.

Jan. 2001
Dawn Marie Interactive Repositions as ASPectx to Broaden Service Offerings in Breadth and Scope
(Louisville, Ky.)—Dawn Marie Interactive was renamed ASPectx effectively Jan. 1, 2001 to raise awareness of additional services and broaden company offerings. ASPectx was chosen to showcase the need for different perspectives at different times in a company’s history.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dawn Marie Interactive Repositions as ASPectx to Broaden Service Offerings in Breadth and Scope

(Louisville, Ky.)—Dawn Marie Interactive was renamed ASPectx effectively Jan. 1, 2001 to raise awareness of additional services and broaden company offerings. ASPectx was chosen to showcase the need for different perspectives at different times in a company’s history.

Online and offline marketing will be an important growth area for ASPectx in 2001 as the company moves to serve technology-based companies and corporations who need to take a fresh look at “Targeting Technology, Tapping Markets.” The company’s new tagline reflects the ASPectx mission to look at internal business issues from all sides before making technology choices and marketing decisions.

With this tagline, ASPectx puts the focus on looking at company strategies and investing in technologies that make sense in the long haul. Many of ASPectx clients are technology companies that require marketing, and related business planning services to new target audiences and expand their reach.

ASPectx offers solid marketing, branding, and public relations that may encompass web consulting and application hosting strategies.

Technology firms appreciate the firm’s ASPknowledgebase and understanding of how to drive a product or service to targeted demographics. On a fee basis, ASPectx will research and analyze your application service provider to determine if it is appropriate fit or provide information to assist in evaluating ASPs. Full reports are available upon request. ASPs will appreciate our research team efforts in knowing the competition, and our attention to proper planning and execution of new marketing directions.

President Dawn Marie Yankeelov cited increasing outsourcing as a driver in moving to a broader mission statement. “We want to make ASPectx one of the recognized consulting firms for appropriate business planning, marketing, public relations, and research. We will continue to seek out technology clientele looking for growth as well as Fortune 1000 companies interested in technology solutions that works with appropriate marketing for profitability.”
Fortune 1000 firms trust ASPectx to deliver practical information for technology assessment, internet activity, and application service provider choices.

At ASPectx, we believe that market analysis, competitive intelligence research and proper planning for Internet activity are the foundations to a return on investment.

ASPectx

ASP stands for ASP Knowledgebase
E for Editorial Services
C for Consulting
T for Training and Briefings
X for Extra Support in Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations

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For More Information:
Dawn Marie Yankeelov
President, ASPectx
(502) 292-2351

Competitive Intelligence software for Corporate PR Professionals to Consider PR Tactics

January 2000
By Dawn Marie Yankeelov

You can hear the webmasters of the world uniting with the chant, “More web content, more web content…” Screamer advertising headlines tempt, “When is someone going to make it easy, real easy, to get the research I want right off the web?” from USADATA.com, or “FREE, full-text access to research from 2,400 leading business publications to everyone in your organization” from Powerize.com.

So when you are done searching the obvious choices, like Yahoo!, and your boss or the client says its critical to your public relations role to know more about this subject, there are some new options.

More of us are asked to do the research before the plan on our own, today, this minute, with a browser and a connection to the Internet. (And, as the sketch on my wall will attest, “In the beginning…God logged on.”) Competitive intelligence on the web is now highly niche-oriented and can simplify tracking and analysis of important data.

New York-based USADATA.com does have easy primary navigation that makes this site a great choice for searching for relevant consultant research reports already written. And you can, with a few simple clicks, search and access a large online aggregation of available consumer demographic profiles across a multitude of brands. Watch the dates on those reports, because the most relevant research is generally carrying this year’s date. A quick search on 3D Animation markets for a client gave me a list of 10 relevant documents ranging from $2,000 on up from known research and analyst firms, like Frost & Sullivan. For specialized reports–their new “data-to-go” customized reports delivered to the client within 24 hours–you can enter into a live chat session to order. Reports can range from the correlation between people who lie to participate in particular sports to age and income statistics for specific cities or even a more competitive intelligence approach, such as a competitor’s online advertising expenditures and placements. They also offer mailing lists with phone numbers and email in certain categories. And, they have created a portal system to deploy it across your entire organization through their Marketing Information Portal™. The MarketTarget™ graphical user interface being offered will assist in generating reports from your databases and/or their databases.

Reston,Va.-based Powerize.com falls into a category of websites that attempt to classify data by industry and company for other companies to search for competitive advantage. Free summaries by industry are now available in the following sectors: banking and financial, computers and Internet, energy and utilities, healthcare, insurance, media, pharmaceuticals, and telecommunications. After a quick, complimentary look around the site you are asked to register by giving your email and name for access to most data. Free and for-fee data is available in a mixed offering. The fees are similar to other sites, under $5, for specific branded marketing reports or profiles, news articles, and research reports. Even patent filings are displayed under a search term, although not always relevant to your search. For example, a search under PNC will bring up metals with the acronym as well as the banking entity. The site currently references 11 million public and private companies.

For searching ready-made analysis of comprehensive financial information for a company and its peers, the product Compbook™ (compbook.xls.com) from Data Downlink Corporation established in 1996 in N.Y. and the United Kingdom offers a user-defined approach. This is a tool designed to assist in the analysis of comparative data. Financial data, earnings estimates, betas, mergers, and acquisitions information, equity issuance data as well as investment research and archival news headlines can be included in a Compbook.

Searching the database for companies you require is free, as is some basic financial data returned from a search, however you do pay for each report or sheet you require–the $3.00 to $8.00 range. Pricing is variable, based on the number of companies in the Compbook you have created and the amount of data available. The primary sources of financial data for the 20,000 companies in the system are Market Guide for the United States companies, and FT-Excel, which is used for European companies.

When a short answer from a press release or a financial analysis won’t do, and you need more in-depth understanding, ebooks on technical, professional and academic subjects are accessible at two newer sites–net Library and fatbrain.com. net Library allows you to operate much like you would at a normal library, by checking out an eBook, viewing it online that minute, or viewing it offline by downloading it onto your computer. If a book is already in use, you can reserve it like a regular library. But, what makes this computer clicking worthwhile is the tremendous search capabilities. You can search for a phrase, or keyword and it will take you to the appropriate page. You can also highlight, bookmark, or annotate text, all of which can be saved and used if the eBook is viewed again. Several hundred titles a day are being added to the collection with a focus on reference, academic, and professional books. Signup for the public collection is free, but the subscription-based model of $29.95 applies for the private collection.

Fatbrain.com has spent a great deal of its public relations budget promoting its bookstore and eMatter collections. For research on a wide variety of topics, eMatter is worth a search. Here authors can post their own pieces from technical papers to chapters from books of varying lengths for a fee they set. Magazine publishers have seen an opportunity to republish print content for a small fee–$2 to $10, so articles of interest in professional categories are available as well. Among the players with content on the eMatter site are recognizable names, such as CAP Ventures, Inc., a leading market research firm covering the digital publishing industry; MacMillan USA, a leading publisher of computer information; and McGraw-Hill Professional Books Group; RAND Corp., publisher of articles and reports on public policy issues; and Nolo.com, a leading provider of self-help legal information. And, if you are a frustrated writer, you can explore posting your own original thoughts, be those white papers, professional topics, or fiction yourself. This is one medium where you don’t have to be an established writer to get into the new form of “print.”

Perhaps you started your public relations career using the big reference books by The Gale Group for media lists, for example; or their CD-ROM product, InfoTrac, launched in 1985, to retrieve periodical documents. The Gale Group has now migrated to a web-centric approach completely in mid-1999. Their online services called SearchBank and GaleNet were retired in favor of the single brand “InfoTrac Web.” Simple extras that can make a difference in search include enabling library patrons to bookmark their searches for repeat use.

If economic and policy issues are more important to you, than using a product like Boardview® from The Conference Board, a non-profit business membership and research organization, could be helpful. The price is hefty, $7,000 to $8,000 per year, but special prices can be negotiated for academic institutions. This allows you 4,000 economic and statistical variables from ten different databases, such as Conference Board Short Term Economic Forecasts, U.S. Regional and State Economic Indicators, and International Economic Indicators. The price does mean access to The Conference Board staff economists and invitations to various conferences and special councils. The product was launched in 1994, but now is available to non-members as well. The graphics capabilities allow you to save multivariate charts of any combination in several styles and add your own company planning data. The product earned a Database magazine Editor’s Choice Award in February 1999.

An up and coming service to watch is SkyMinder.com by CRIBIS Information Services (cribis.com) for those particularly interested in modest, pay-per-fee European business information. The navigation loads quickly and is intuitive. The website promises access to company and executive profiles, credit information, industry reports, financial data, new and public records, pertaining to more than 11 million US and European companies. Unfortunately Netscape browsers will have difficulty logging in until their programmers work out the bugs, and many of the fields are empty at the time of this writing.

Perhaps the most comprehensive tool for searching United States government data is usgovsearch.com by Northern Light. The bulk of the premium, pay-per-view content in usgovsearch.com comes from abstracts from the NTIS database that has been called the oldest and largest database in the history of online, by Searcher magazine. The current model at usgovsearch.com is a $5/day pass minimum plus nominal charges under $5 for various restricted content. A money-back guarantee applies for articles purchased. An annual pass costs $250. The database encompasses abstracts for U.S. government-sponsored research, development, and engineering (both in-house and contracted), plus abstracts describing analyses from federal agencies, their contractors, or grantees, in addition to foreign research from the Japan Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), laboratories administered by the United Kingdom Department of Industry, the German Federal Ministry of Research and Technology (BMFT); the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), plus others. For the traditional information librarian in the government space, more than 20,000 federal government home pages exist. Over 4 million web pages in the US government domain currently exist and are searchable through usgovsearch.com. The joint venture website combines the search engine technology of Northern Light with tremendous content, transforming known data into organized collections, 2 million records, that can be searched with more than 25,000 terms at present.

When all else fails, go to the search engine called google.com, and hit “I feel lucky.” With a defined query, this beautifully-simplistic search site launched in September 1999 generally takes you where you need to go. And, we all need to lighten up and enjoy our work more.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dawn Marie Interactive’s “Woman of the Millenium” Calendar Wins Gold Award in 11th Annual Golden Ink Awards Competition

(Louisville, KY)–Publishing & Production Executive and Printing Impressions magazines, co-sponsors of the Annual Golden Ink Awards, awarded a first place Gold Award to Dawn Marie Interactive in the calendar category for DMI’s “Woman of the Millenium” calendar.

DMI’s entry was chosen from nearly 1,850 entries submitted within 33 different categories. Winning pieces for this annual award are presented based upon print quality, quality of color separations, technical difficulty and overall visual effect.

Dawn Marie Interactive is a full service new media promotions company specializing in marketing development for technology companies and web based strategies for corporations. DMI currently represents a number of companies including Internet startups, an online stock photo agency and a developer of knowledge management tools. Clients are based throughout the United States, and Europe. For more information, go to www.dawnmarie.com.

The poster size wall calendar printed by Hennegan based in Florence, Ky., is a collage of textures intended to evoke the historical influences which guide our historic leap forward through the communications revolution sweeping society today. The textures combine together to form the image of a woman, representing the human nature of these new technologies.

DMI Print calendars were distributed via direct mail in the region and at: Annual Digital AGSI Conference (Association of Global Strategic Information) on Data Mining, Data Visualization, and Intelligent Agents Sept. 17th-19th, 1998 Atlanta, Ga. Approx. 250 attendees www.infonortics.com President Dawn Marie Yankeelov of DMI served as a conference organizer for the event.

The 1998 Gold Ink Awards Banquet, held to honor the winners, took place on Monday evening, October 26 at McCormick Place in Chicago during Graph Expo and Converting Expo 98. Contact Michael Cooper of the National Gold Ink Awards for more information at (215) 238-5434.

–

Header:
October 1998
Dawn Marie Interactive’s Woman of the Millenium Calendar Wins Gold Award
(Louisville, KY)–Publishing & Production Executive and Printing Impressions magazines, co-sponsors of the Annual Golden Ink Awards, awarded a first place Gold Award to Dawn Marie Interactive in the calendar category for DMI’s “Woman of the Millenium” calendar
–
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dawn Marie Interactive’s “Woman of the Millenium” Calendar Wins Gold Award in 11th Annual Golden Ink Awards Competition

(Louisville, KY)–Publishing & Production Executive and Printing Impressions magazines, co-sponsors of the Annual Golden Ink Awards, awarded a first place Gold Award to Dawn Marie Interactive in the calendar category for DMI’s “Woman of the Millenium” calendar.

DMI’s entry was chosen from nearly 1,850 entries submitted within 33 different categories. Winning pieces for this annual award are presented based upon print quality, quality of color separations, technical difficulty and overall visual effect.

Dawn Marie Interactive is a full service new media promotions company specializing in marketing development for technology companies and web based strategies for corporations. DMI currently represents a number of companies including Internet startups, an online stock photo agency and a developer of knowledge management tools. Clients are based throughout the United States, and Europe. For more information, go to www.dawnmarie.com.

The poster size wall calendar printed by Hennegan based in Florence, Ky., is a collage of textures intended to evoke the historical influences which guide our historic leap forward through the communications revolution sweeping society today. The textures combine together to form the image of a woman, representing the human nature of these new technologies.

DMI Print calendars were distributed via direct mail in the region and at: Annual Digital AGSI Conference (Association of Global Strategic Information) on Data Mining, Data Visualization, and Intelligent Agents Sept. 17th-19th, 1998 Atlanta, Ga. Approx. 250 attendees www.infonortics.com President Dawn Marie Yankeelov of DMI served as a conference organizer for the event.

The 1998 Gold Ink Awards Banquet, held to honor the winners, took place on Monday evening, October 26 at McCormick Place in Chicago during Graph Expo and Converting Expo 98. Contact Michael Cooper of the National Gold Ink Awards for more information at (215) 238-5434.

–

For More Information:

December 1997
Mike Slone Develops Woman of the Millenium Calendar
(Louisville, Ky.)–After 150 sketches and a running dialogue with the owner of Dawn Marie Interactive, designer Mike Slone has developed a thought-provoking, powerful woman of the millennium in his latest calendar/print.
—
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Mike Slone Develops Woman of the Millennium Calendar Print to Be Distributed Locally and Overseas

(Louisville, Ky.)–After 150 sketches and a running dialogue with the owner of Dawn Marie Interactive, designer Mike Slone has developed a thought-provoking, powerful woman of the millennium in his latest calendar/print.

Slone describes his current branding work for DMI as a mix of surrealism and renaissance. “The world is dynamic and instead of two cups and a string, we are using two computers and a phone line. This woman depicts the human interactions that remain in new media. It’s one of a series of images we are developing as Dawn Marie Interactive expands.”

“The ‘new’ woman of the millennium is a well-crafted collage of what has been and it politely questions what will be,” according to Dawn Marie Yankeelov, owner of Dawn Marie Interactive. Each texture in the work depicts a rapid move forward leading to the web-based technologies promoted today. The woman is represented as a whole, because this is the purest way to display a human being, according to Yankeelov and Slone.

The print was designed to be viewed at different levels: ?Greek influences–The central pose is universal, and speaks to all humanity.

Early Renaissance–The blue colorwash speaks of the fresco, an art done on sections of white plaster, and begins the journey of disseminating the news of the day. Industrial Revolution–The steel plates are included because they helped us build and construct our first visions of progress, such as ships and later airplanes. Digital Communication–Speed through light and the tremendous change in communications makes up the form. The Marking of Time–The foundation or leg of our humanness is still marked as time spent. Time follows paths into the vortexes of our decisions, and we become a human hourglass.

Africa and the Environment–The woman is holding the weight of the world and all its responsibility. Africa may represent the last opportunity for preservation.

“My team wanted this piece to generate discussion, conversation and communicate creativity. The woman asks questions without speaking. This is the key to the print’s success. It sends you to the website and its creators to seek out more information,” said Yankeelov. The questions debated upon the poster’s unveiling include:

The questions debated upon the poster’s unveiling include:

* What use of technology is wise for the human spirit?
* Will the computer start to run our lives and blueprint us?
* How can technology interact in a more earth-friendly way?
* What is the proper role of technology in today’s world?

More than 2,000 prints will be distributed to Louisville corporations and overseas at trade-related events.

Mike Slone’s credits include 2 Graphis International Design Awards for poster art in 1997:
1997 Dinnerworks, a benefit for the Louisville Visual Arts Association;
1997 The Louisville Ballet’s Nutcracker. (both a collaboration with his partner, Julius Friedman)

Dawn Marie Interactive is a new media marketing firm based in Louisville, Ky. Client services include: strategic planning for the deployment of web-based technologies, website development, corporate CD-ROM development, and all forms of marketing and public relations to support those venues. For more information contact owner Dawn Marie Interactive at dawny@dawnmarie.com and check out www.dawnmarie.com.

DMI Print Calendars will be distributed at the following events:

March 24-26, 1998
Eurotel ’98 International Conference; Brussels, Belgium
Approx. 700 attendees including European Counter-Intelligence, military networks, electronic publishers, law enforcement.

March 25-28, 1998
SCIP Annual Internet Conference; Chicago, Ill. SCIP stands for Society of Competitive Intelligence.
Approx. 3,000 to 4,000 attendees

April 1st and 2nd, 1998
Annual International Meeting on Search Engines Technology; Boston, Mass. by Infornortics Ltd. of the United Kingdom
Approx. 120 attendees www.infonortics.com.

April 12th, 1998
AIIP Annual Conference (AIIP stands for Association of Independent Information Professionals) Approx. 5,000 attendees

Sept. 17th-19th, 1998
Annual Digital AGSI Conference on Data Mining, Data Visualization, and other Intelligent Agents; Atlanta, Ga. (AGSI stands for the Association of Global Strategic Information)
Approx. 250 attendees
www.infonortics.com

Oct. 12th-14th, 1998
Online ’98; San Francisco, CA
Approx. 600 attendees
www.onlineinc.com

December 1997

Mike Slone Develops Woman of the Millenium Calendar

(Louisville, Ky.)–After 150 sketches and a running dialogue with the owner of Dawn Marie Interactive, designer Mike Slone has developed a thought-provoking, powerful woman of the millennium in his latest calendar/print.
—
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Mike Slone Develops Woman of the Millennium Calendar Print to Be Distributed Locally and Overseas

(Louisville, Ky.)–After 150 sketches and a running dialogue with the owner of Dawn Marie Interactive, designer Mike Slone has developed a thought-provoking, powerful woman of the millennium in his latest calendar/print.

Slone describes his current branding work for DMI as a mix of surrealism and renaissance. “The world is dynamic and instead of two cups and a string, we are using two computers and a phone line. This woman depicts the human interactions that remain in new media. It’s one of a series of images we are developing as Dawn Marie Interactive expands.”

“The ‘new’ woman of the millennium is a well-crafted collage of what has been and it politely questions what will be,” according to Dawn Marie Yankeelov, owner of Dawn Marie Interactive. Each texture in the work depicts a rapid move forward leading to the web-based technologies promoted today. The woman is represented as a whole, because this is the purest way to display a human being, according to Yankeelov and Slone.

The print was designed to be viewed at different levels: ?Greek influences–The central pose is universal, and speaks to all humanity.

Early Renaissance–The blue colorwash speaks of the fresco, an art done on sections of white plaster, and begins the journey of disseminating the news of the day. Industrial Revolution–The steel plates are included because they helped us build and construct our first visions of progress, such as ships and later airplanes. Digital Communication–Speed through light and the tremendous change in communications makes up the form. The Marking of Time–The foundation or leg of our humanness is still marked as time spent. Time follows paths into the vortexes of our decisions, and we become a human hourglass.

Africa and the Environment–The woman is holding the weight of the world and all its responsibility. Africa may represent the last opportunity for preservation.

“My team wanted this piece to generate discussion, conversation and communicate creativity. The woman asks questions without speaking. This is the key to the print’s success. It sends you to the website and its creators to seek out more information,” said Yankeelov. The questions debated upon the poster’s unveiling include:

The questions debated upon the poster’s unveiling include:

* What use of technology is wise for the human spirit?
* Will the computer start to run our lives and blueprint us?
* How can technology interact in a more earth-friendly way?
* What is the proper role of technology in today’s world?

More than 2,000 prints will be distributed to Louisville corporations and overseas at trade-related events.

Mike Slone’s credits include 2 Graphis International Design Awards for poster art in 1997:
1997 Dinnerworks, a benefit for the Louisville Visual Arts Association;
1997 The Louisville Ballet’s Nutcracker. (both a collaboration with his partner, Julius Friedman)

Dawn Marie Interactive is a new media marketing firm based in Louisville, Ky. Client services include: strategic planning for the deployment of web-based technologies, website development, corporate CD-ROM development, and all forms of marketing and public relations to support those venues. For more information contact owner Dawn Marie Interactive at dawny@dawnmarie.com and check out www.dawnmarie.com.

DMI Print Calendars will be distributed at the following events:

March 24-26, 1998
Eurotel ’98 International Conference; Brussels, Belgium
Approx. 700 attendees including European Counter-Intelligence, military networks, electronic publishers, law enforcement.

March 25-28, 1998
SCIP Annual Internet Conference; Chicago, Ill. SCIP stands for Society of Competitive Intelligence.
Approx. 3,000 to 4,000 attendees

April 1st and 2nd, 1998
Annual International Meeting on Search Engines Technology; Boston, Mass. by Infornortics Ltd. of the United Kingdom
Approx. 120 attendees www.infonortics.com.

April 12th, 1998
AIIP Annual Conference (AIIP stands for Association of Independent Information Professionals) Approx. 5,000 attendees

Sept. 17th-19th, 1998
Annual Digital AGSI Conference on Data Mining, Data Visualization, and other Intelligent Agents; Atlanta, Ga. (AGSI stands for the Association of Global Strategic Information)
Approx. 250 attendees
www.infonortics.com

Oct. 12th-14th, 1998
Online ’98; San Francisco, CA
Approx. 600 attendees
www.onlineinc.com